Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Supreme Court judgment of 22 February 2017 and her Department's subsequent pause on decision-making on certain settlement applications, (a) how many of those applications are waiting to be processed, (b) what the average amount of time taken to process each application is and (c) what the timetable is for coming to a decision on all of those applications.

The temporary hold in place on applications with which the Supreme Court judgment was concerned was lifted on 10 August when changes to the Immigration Rules came into effect.

As of 30 June 2017, there were around 5000 such applications on hold which are now being decided in accordance with the new Immigration Rules. We are unable to estimate how long it will take to consider the paused applications as it will depend on the individual circumstances of each case.

More information regarding UK Visas and Immigration service standards can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-visas-and-immigration/about-our-services